3x01 Electric Sheep

[8.4/10] The Orville works best when it’s a straight Star Trek imitation, and that's as true in the as the show kicks off its third season as it ever was. The crud that holds the show back -- the tepid attempts at romance between Mercer and Grayson, the juvenile humor -- is all but gone. With that out of the way, you get one of the show’s very best episodes.

“Electric Sheep” is a seventy-minute meditation on heady topics like: suicide, communal anger, moral blame, pragmatic decisionmaking in the face of larger threats, and ethical duties in the face of personal bitterness. The Orville, of course, filters that through high concept ideas like an artificial lifeform trying to kill itself, crewmembers processing their losses from an attack of killer robots, and whether someone who can digest the world in four dimensional space will help save the existence of an android. Michael Piller would be proud of the combo.

It’s also an opportunity for the series to show off at the advent of its third season, with a new network (Hulu), new subtitle (“New Horizons”), and new refit of the ship to dangle in front of the audience. The episode opens with an epic space battle, shines a spotlight on the “Pterodon” (their sleek new shuttlecraft), and beams through fancier new sets and CGI effects to wow anyone who’s forgotten about the show in the three years since it was last on the air.

This is in keeping with the proud Star Trek tradition, as anyone who enjoyed and then suffered through Star Trek: The Motion Pictures long swooping shots of the new cinema-ready Enterprise can attest. In truth, it gets a little tiresome here too. But I’ll confess, while some of the CGI looks fake or plastic-y in places, I find myself preferring the aesthetic of The Orville to its Kurtzman-era Star Trek counterparts. The visuals on shows like Discovery and Picard can feel a little sterile or antiseptic, while there’s a warmth and sense of shiny vibrance to the look here that helps make the viewer feel more at home.

I also admire the show taking what amounts to a whole episode to deal with the psychological fallout of the Union’s betrayal from and battle with the Kaylon, and by extension, Isaac’s continued presence on the ship. The show didn’t completely breeze over the issue in season 2, but certainly put it on the backburner. Addressing how the Finn family would feel, and other rank and file officers would react, to having someone whose choices, however influenced by external factor, resulted in thousands of deaths, is fertile ground to explore.

It reflects Commander Sisko’s simmering anger at Captain Picard’s actions as Locutus of Borg. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the only 90s Trek homage at play here. Ensign Burke’s decision over whether to help Isaac despite her resentments parallel’s Worf’s decision whether to give blood to save the life of a hated Romulan. Examining how and why and extraordinary being would want to end its existence is of a piece with a Q wanting to do the same in Voyager. And there’s scads of smaller shoutouts as we see the Orville itself in dry dock undergoing a refit.

I don’t mind that. The show’s never been shy about wearing its influences on its sleeve, and there are worse sources to pull from. To the point, one the things I always loved about classic Star Trek is the way it would present these moral dilemmas and nudge the audience to think about what they would do in the situation, how they would feel if this happened to them, in the process.

So we’re encouraged to puzzle over the morality of suicide, and more importantly, the psychology of how loved ones and enemies would respond to it. We’re asked to contemplate whether we would act to save the life of someone whose choices resulted in the death of our best friend. We’re made to consider the line between expressing anger at someone we feel deserves it, and recoiling when they take our admonition to heart and try to kill themselves. There’s genuine layers of personal and ethical complexity at play, with rich conversations and debates about all of these things, in keeping with the proud tradition that The Orville so conspicuously follows.

It also serves as an introduction for Ensign Burke, the new member of the main cast who gets quite a bit of focus here. Unfortunately, the actress isn’t especially good in the role in this episode. Hopefully it’s just a matter of settling into the technobabble and jelling with the rest of the cast. On paper, the character is interesting, someone with unique spatial abilities and a legitimate grudge against one of the most interesting figures on the ship.

Her steadfast bitterness at the Kaylon and Isaac for what happened in the battle of last season is understandable but also against the values of the Federation (er...Union). Her willingness to be relieved of duty rather than help him shows how deep her anger cuts. She chooses to save him, though, not because she believes he deserves it, or buys Mercer’s argument for the pragmatism of having someone with intel on what the Kaylon might do around, or would be in any way sad about his death. Instead, she wants to spare Marcus Finn the pain of his guilt after basically telling Isaac to drop dead before his suicide attempt. Again, there’s a multifaceted element to the morality there, which is very much in my Trekkie wheelhouse.

The decision to process all of this through the Finn family is particularly canny. Marcus is a good fulcrum for the story, someone who had a connection to Isaac and feels personally betrayed. He’s a child, so doesn’t come with the expectation of professionalism or maturity , and the visions of his nightmares and discomfort with Isaac help justify his outbursts. He is the emotional core of this one, and while the young actor takes his lumps in some of the higher volume scenes, it’s a good place for MacFarlane and company to channel the story through.

All of that said, Penny Johnson takes the crown here. “Electric Sheep” is as much about exploring the ways in which people react to a suicide as it is about the act itself. In that vein, I truly admire the way the creative team uses the episode’s extended runtime to make space for Dr. Finn to ruminate on her complicated grief over Isaac’s death. Her exchange with Grayson, about how to mourn someone you have complicated feelings about, is writerly but poignant. And I adore the choice to spend a single, long, score-free scene to show the character steeping herself in the place where she and Isaac were happy and letting herself melt at the loss. It puts the sentiment of the season entirely on the actor's shoulders, and Johnson knocks it out of the park.

My only major complaint here is that they don’t follow-through on the business with Isaac here. Plenty of Star Trek shows had fake outs with major character deaths before restoring the status quo at the end of the episode. And LeMarr’s technobabble solution to the problem isn’t outside acceptable tolerances for the science-as-magic of this subgenre. They even do something to earn in terms of character by putting the choice on a reluctant Ensign Burke.

It just cheapens the melancholy of showing that, however emotion free Isaac may be, in his own way, he took the ostracism and resentment and revulsion he sensed from others to heart. He saw the pain he caused the rest of the crew and wanted to stop it. Undoing those consequences, especially after an episode’s worth of stellar scenes of grief and psychological healing, softens them.

Yet, I like how the show uses this peculiar sci-fi scenario to grapple with the mentality behind suicide. It doesn’t turn into an after school special, even having an alien character voice the idea that, in her culture, they respect it as a personal choice since no one asks to be born. But hearing Isaac’s reasons come right from the source gives Dr. Finn the chance to address them, to explain why present problems aren’t necessarily forever problems, and dramatize how a desire to spare people pain can end up producing more of it.

The show takes a side here, while acknowledging countervailing views and taking an empathetic, humane approach to the issue. That is extraordinary Star Trek, and hopefully a sign of things to come as The Orville embarks on its third tour of duty. This is an excellent shakedown cruise for the new season, which shows off the fancy new bells and whistles, but also delivers a level of storytelling and moral complexity that befits the traditions of the franchise this series is aping.

The Orville is back! And it looks amazing. Although we maybe spend a little too much time looking at space docks and starships. But they compensated with additional runtime so I take it.

The story is again what this is about. It was great that they picked up on the fact that Isaac was re-instated and what that meant for the crew onboard. Althought I think they are all wrong about him. Yes, it's human to hate and they need a scapegoat. But Isaac did only follow his programming, he did what he was supposed to do just like your PC does what you tell him. But he then overcame his programming, choosing (!) to help defeat the Kaylons. He became more then his program.

The whole story is an analogy about online mobbing and how it can drive people to commit suicide. Claire's words toward Isaac at the end make that clear. It's great to see we still follow that formula and wrap the stories around real problems.

But despite the fact that Burke helped at the end, I still don't like her. That's probably what they wanted to achieve with the character. It would have been easy to make her come around and a part of me is glad the didn't take that road. But for her to get on my good side there will be a lot of redeeming involved.